08.05.2013

In the House of the Hangman 1316

Like Tibetan
monks they say, “Go on the party plane where even the turbulence / Is
turbo-fun. So’s the skin seared by fun sun. It’s like a bardo ‘cept you won’t
be sick and the food’s out of sight.” Shake / Ass in that stationary way and
refuse to be moved / I will not be moved!
They’ll say things like that. OK. Content yourselves with having to contend /
With interminable omnipotent party planning. And she also theorized that what
happens to me has something to do with my face, with my cheeks in particular,
the way I beam and smile and have round cheeks. She said “you are like a doll
with round cheeks, like a cabbage patch doll!” We asked the limo chauffeur who
he was / chauffeuring and he wouldn’t tell us and rolled up / his window / That
state where – where they are hiding / with a rubber gloved hand – where perhaps
because of the self’s dissociation from it-self – all interaction a total
empathy with everything, the sex on Ambien, the lubricant, the red / blindfold
cowboy bandanna, the counter- / top interlude of artificial sapphire powder
dawn’s / sky mimicked when the lamp was turned off / you could see thru the
slivers of the blinds and / again hear the fucking birds as you fell asleep, I
say ekphrastic too because this part reminds me of Chris Kraus’ wonderful
book I Love Dick (which I
may well never actually read). “And-and-and. And is or isn’t sincerity just a
denial or not a denial of complexity I mean is or isn’t complexity just a
denial or not a denial of sincerity?” ‘Yeah,
well,’ said the peach modestly. ‘You know — the days go by.’ And the
bunnitaur walks blind towards the little yellow prairie dogs, I mean, would not
a phatic poetics complete Schlegel's vision of a buffo’s sprezzaturan
irony? Is not the lineage, as well as the grotesque, illuminated, the
moment one recognizes in Socrates the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship for
his enlarged photographs of shoppers strolling the aisles of American
supermarkets? One of his poetic shopping lists had been nominated for a
Pushcart prize. Goldin+Senneby’s new project for CCA originates in Sweden, the
home country of this artistic duo, circa 1780, when mineralogist August
Nordenskiöld was secretly employed by King Gustav III to pursue a little
alchemy. Nordenskiöld was attempting to produce gold, which in the king’s view
was necessary to boost the country’s wealth and sustain a war against Russia.
Nordenskiöld’s covert agenda however was to make his discoveries available to
all; ultimately aiming to abolish the tyranny of money. Or I read — thumbing
through pages of “tender accuracies” — out of On the Nameways: Volume One (2000), Coolidge’s “Another
Backyard Deviance”:

Grotesques
are men with giant pins
in their travels
…

…
I know
I got one
immersed in prefab steel
…

…

…

…

…

…

And: (“the best
of the hard / to catch”) the two inevitably seem to belong together (“you have
to keep”) …